How to grow the number of regular customers in your restaurant

Growing our list of frequent or regular customers in our restaurant should, without a doubt, be one of the goals of anyone in the restaurant industry, because of the great benefits it can bring.

I have lived it firsthand… putting effort into this can catapult your restaurant to the next level; your financial takeoff can practically come from it.

These are some of the results I have achieved with this, and that you can achieve too:

• Steady revenue growth, sometimes every month, sometimes every two months.
• More capital to reinvest in the business.
• Lower cost and less effort when attracting customers.
• Greater motivation and peace of mind, which makes constant innovation inside the business easier.
• The ability to expand your space, open new locations, and hire more staff, which lets you reduce your stress and have more time available.

This really is one of the main methods for greatly increasing a restaurant's sales. It translates into higher profits and, in the end, into a better lifestyle for you, a greater sense of fulfillment, fewer worries, and frankly, more happiness in your life.

The benefits we get as business owners from growing the number of customers who visit us frequently are quite clear and obvious, and if we manage to make that growth steady, even better…

Personally, in all of my restaurants, I try to implement a kind of system or culture focused precisely on growing this number. I like to call it a system, but it is really just a series of simple strategies that are easy to implement, and you simply have to get the whole team to commit to executing those strategies or actions in order to succeed with the implementation.

I do not have an exact or defined system, because from my own experience I have realized that how effective these strategies are depends entirely on each restaurant's own situation (location, reputation, market size, etc.).

Some things work perfectly in one restaurant, but in others they do not work so well or are not as "applicable"…

For that reason, I will mention 7 of the things I do almost constantly, so that from those ideas you can define your own "system," adapting everything to the reality of your business, your location, the type of customer you serve, etc., and along the way remove whatever you consider not applicable to your restaurant. We are basically talking about ways to "boost" the growth of our regular customer base. These are the things I do:

1 – Implementing a culture among your employees

You have to define a culture that must be passed on to all employees, especially those who are in direct contact with customers. By culture I mean a series of behaviors or attitudes that must be instilled in each and every one of them when dealing with a customer.

It is quite pleasant when a customer posts on your Facebook page that they are grateful for the good treatment they received from one of your employees, but it is unpleasant when they post exactly the opposite, that is, when they complain about the apparent bad treatment they received from one of your employees.

That is why it is important to establish a general culture so that all employees are in tune, coordinated, and focused on offering the best treatment to customers.

You can see this strategy, for example, in some large telephone companies when you visit one of their stores. There it is quite obvious that the employees have been trained beforehand, and no matter who serves you, they all give their best.

To make it easy, and to get a greater commitment from employees, it is important to motivate them.

I share the following reads with you, which can be very useful for reaching that goal:

Motivating restaurant employees to increase profits

Get your restaurant employees to put themselves in the customer's shoes

2 – The relationship with customers

I like my team to have a fairly personal relationship with customers, a somewhat affectionate one, so that they show genuine interest in them as people and not only as customers.

As a first important point, I invite them to try to remember names, customers' particular tastes, and the very specific needs they have told us about before.

It is not easy to do this with everyone, but you can with a good share of them, and the results have always been tremendous.

3 – Professional customer relationship management

By "remembering" alone it is very difficult to establish a real relationship with a large number of customers. That is why I have relied on a cloud software application to properly manage relationships with a large number of customers.

Remember that the goal is to keep growing the number of regular customers, and waiting for our staff to remember everything about everyone is an impossible task, but technology can be very useful for meeting this goal.

So as not to make this article too long, later in another post I will give more details about the type of application you can use.

4 – Focus on loyalty

You have to learn to build customer loyalty. Today there are many options for eating out or ordering delivery, which is why it is important to implement processes that make loyalty easier, so that customers decide to keep visiting the restaurant and at the same time feel delighted with us, so that they do not hesitate to recommend us to their friends.

This read can be very useful: How to build customer loyalty in a restaurant? A practical, real-life explanation

5 – Always give more than they expect

You have to try to exceed the expectations of even the most demanding customer. Customers receiving more than they expect always brings positive results.

Customers will recommend you without hesitation. They will be like "billboards" for your business whenever they are talking about restaurants with their friends or when someone asks them for places to eat out.

This read can be very useful:

How to exceed your restaurant customers' expectations

6 – Correct and consistent use of Facebook

You should know that several of my restaurants have grown thanks to Facebook; in fact, by now some of my restaurants only use Facebook to attract customers on a daily basis, and it works incredibly well for me.

It mainly helps me with continuous exposure in front of customers who have already visited my restaurants, and at the same time, thanks to that connection with those customers, I can reach their friends through the reactions of the former to my posts.

That is why I never get tired of recommending it…

It is important that you use and consistently monitor your presence on this social network, because Facebook is without a doubt a great channel for attracting customers. I have proven it completely…

This read can be very useful:

10 reasons why Facebook can be a great ally for your restaurant

7 – Professional email follow-up

Email marketing is a technique that, when used correctly, can help you follow up effectively with regular customers and keep certain revenue steady at the restaurant.

Once a week you can send communications that include promotions or special discounts that apply only to customers registered in the system, that is, only customers who receive the messages (you define the registration method and parameters for the list yourself).

Promotions can be general for everyone, but if you launch special promotions or discounts that are exclusive to email list members, you will be able to keep better track of how the email marketing strategy performs.

In this post you will find the most economical and viable way to implement an email marketing strategy in your restaurant:

A strategy to keep customers coming back to your restaurant

I never get tired of saying it: take action, do not stop at reading… go and implement one of the recommendations and you will see the great results you will start to get.